A man who was previously convicted, then acquitted of an Escondido girl’s 1998 killing, pleaded guilty Thursday to a misdemeanor count of methamphetamine possession.
A judge sentenced Richard Raymond Tuite, 51, to time served in custody.
Officials arrested and charged him in January of last year with a single felony count of being a convicted felon on prison grounds or adjacent lands.
It was not clear why Tuite was allegedly at the downtown San Diego lockup. He faced a charge, though, of being on-site while having prior convictions that include burglary, bribery and escape from a jail.
On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to the amended drug possession charge. His sentence – time served for about 150 days he spent in jail last year, according to the San Diego County District Attorney’s Office.
Tuite was previously convicted of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 13 years in state prison in the well-publicized stabbing death of Stephanie Crowe, 12.
His conviction in the death of the seventh grader was later overturned. He was acquitted in a 2013 retrial.
Crowe’s body was found sprawled in the doorway of her bedroom by her grandmother early on the morning of Jan. 21, 1998. She suffered nine stab wounds.
Her older brother, Michael, and two of his friends, Aaron Houser and Joshua Treadway, initially were accused of committing the murder. Police extracted confessions from two of them during lengthy interrogations.
The admissions were later ruled to have been coerced, and the charges against the boys were dismissed. During Tuite’s retrial, the now-adult former suspects testified that they had no involvement in Stephanie’s death.
Tuite had been in the area of the Crowe residence the night the girl was killed. He was agitated and looking for a woman named Tracy, according to prosecutors.
They contended that the disheveled and seemingly confused transient wandered into the Crowe home and attacked the girl.
Investigators, however, found no physical evidence directly linking him to the crime scene.
Analysts found the victim’s blood on two shirts that Tuite wore on the day of the girl’s death. Jurors who voted to acquit Tuite said they believed a defense theory of “contamination.”
That means that blood from the crime scene somehow wound up transferred onto Tuite’s clothing.